The North Face Endurance Challenge California 50K

I am, as of last Saturday the 6th of December 2014, now, officially, technically, an ultrarunner.

Having finished the North Face Endurance Challenge California 50K (and so far I've felt the need to write the entire thing out like that, "the North Face Endurance Challenge California 50K") I've finally completed an ultra distance. Now, I keep reading that anything over 26.2 miles is technically considered an ultramarathon but that 50K is considered by most a real ultra. The thing is, it's basically the entry level, starter-home version of the ultra - my wife thinks I'm nutty for saying it, but hey, I wasn't running the 50 miler that day.

Which was one of the cool things about the way the North Face Endurance Challenge California 50K (see?) was set up - the whole event was very well organized - with the 50 milers starting two hours before the 50K runners, etc., the starts staggered such that the entire day of racing would end at more or less the same time (individual speed permitting, natch), which also meant that as a 50K runner you'd cross paths early in the day with the 50 milers, and then later in the day with the marathoners, etc. The 50K started at 7am, a little chilly but without any of the rain that had been pouring down in the city across the Golden Gate bridge just hours before.

Which reminds me: the North Face Endurance Challenge California 50K was held in the Marin Headlands. When we arrived in San Francisco that Wednesday I checked the weather report and saw that Saturday was supposed to be dry, maybe even with a little sun, no prob. But that Friday, after I picked up my bib from the North Face store in Union Square, we met a nanny at the Children's Creativity Museum who commented offhand that it was supposed to pour the next day. In a panic, I dropped my family off for their afternoon nap and raced back to the North Face to put to use the 10% off coupon for race participants buying perhaps the most expensive article of running clothing I'd ever bought, a the North Face (I'm never sure how the articles should be used when a definite one is included in the proper noun, thus the "a the North Face") waterproof shell for $150, more than I'd ever be willing to spend on shoes, etc. Which is silly because I love running in the rain (my first marathon, the L.A. in 2011 - torrential downpour with hypothermia), but for some reason I was convinced I had to buy more stuff, spend more money. Given that the day of the race was actually rainless, I'm now convinced that the nanny who'd commented on the forecast was a plant from the North Face.

Cameron (with whom I'd run that first L.A. Marathon) and I arrived at the starting line an hour early, taking a shuttle bus from a middle school in SF that had been designated a park-and-ride. We squelched around in the mud from the rains earlier that week, waiting for the start, doing the usual pre-race hydrating, waiting, peeing from over-hydrating.

At 0700 the 50K racers were sent off in 4 waves, each a couple of minutes apart. Coming around the first major corner, I could hear gasps from the runners around me, all of us nicely stunned by the beauty of the fog rolling over the low hills ahead of us. That was what the entire day was like, just gorgeous, beautiful trails.

The rains that week had washed out one of the trails that the 50K was supposed to be on, and the diverted course meant an early crossed path with the 50 mile group, but I didn't know any better which meant that I didn't really care, although others who had participated in this race before were a bit regretful as the trail we'd missed was supposed to be particularly choice. But this first looping segment was one we'd run on at the very end of the race; on our first pass that morning it was the first major downhill which I ran with glee obvious in the race photos we keep getting email offers to purchase, the second time, not so much.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Also, since it's been a week and a half, a lot of the glow of finishing has worn off, so here are the highlights.

Quick word to the wise: pin your bib to your pant leg, not your shirt. You may be wearing a shell during this ultra, so having it on the leg of your shorts ensures that it remains visible to the personnel at the aid stations.

One cool thing about ultramarathons is instead of just "mile 3" or "mile 18", the aid stations have names associated with their geography, "Tennessee Valley", "Stinson Beach", "Cardiac". Okay, geography or the medical specialty that'll be most visited afterwards.

Bombing down the muddy, sloshy hills was my catnip, probably because I don't routinely get to do it, but later in the race, when my quads were burning (my quads and calves were the most sore), less so.

Coca Cola everywhere! My go-to post-race drink is Coke, probably because the phosphorated carbohydrates have a known antiemetic effect, but every aid station had Coca Cola, and I was slurping down a bunch.

The ultrarunning community is small, so it was cool but also possible that Hal Koerner was going to be on the course with his toddler waving and encouraging the runners - like, in contrast, if you ran the New York marathon you would never have actually seen Meb anywhere on the course or afterwards, really. The ultrarunning community is also bearded. I was part of a small pack of slower runners who were hiking the ascent of Cardiac (the hill with the most ascent, at about mile 18 of the 50K) who would often have to step off the trail to allow the 50 milers and some of the faster 50K runners to continue their descent. One of the 50 milers appeared to be totally copping Rob Krar's aesthetic, and in my mind I was all snidely, "what up, 'Rob Krar'?" with the runners behind me jokingly asking what the deal was with ultrarunners and beards. Turns out that that dude was actually Rob Krar, as I later discovered. The ultrarunning community is small and bearded.

On my descent of Cardiac, which was progressively getting sloshier and muddier, I remembered hearing someone saying that the best tactic was to run on the middle of the trail, where the rivulets of water were running, as the mud would build up there and actually permit some traction. I saw a runner power-hiking up my way, so I thought that I'd get around her by jumping on to the wet middle of the trail. Big mistake: I immediately slipped, fell over abrading my right knee, and then had bilateral calf and a rectus abdominus cramps (both of my medial gastrocnemeii were the parts of my body that were sore the longest after the race) prompting me to cry out, "JESUS!!" The runners in front and behind me stopped and asked if I was okay, and through gritted teeth I joked that it seemed that the universe was telling me to take a break; I eventually got up and speed-limped, but for about 15 minutes afterwards I continued to have a cramp of my abdominal wall muscle that would force me to stop and contemplate the meaning of the North Face Endurance Challenge California 50K.

The mental challenge of running an ultra, or at least this ultra, was a lot lower than that of a regular road marathon. At a regular road marathon, there are aid stations at essentially every mile, and markers for every major subsegment. So at my first marathon, when I saw the marker for the half distance, 13.1 miles, I found myself thinking incredulously, "I gotta do that again?!" An ultra kinda ignores those standard ways of dividing the distance, so by the time you're at the top of Cardiac at mile 18, you've blown past the midway point miles ago without really noticing it. The last aid station was 2.8 miles away from the finish line, so you didn't really have to count down the miles since the distance wasn't precise.

Finally, the community of ultrarunners, small, bearded, or otherwise, was really very cool, and these kind, weird people are burned in to my memory. I met Jose on the bus to the start, he lives in Gilroy and works at the North Face store there, he trail runs a bunch, he biked to the Ferguson protests in Oakland the night before with his friend, he wore a propellor beanie on the race with a huge smile on his face and was super-fast. Matt is a salesman from Bozeman, it was his second time running the North Face Endurance Challenge 50K (his other, third ultra was a 50k at the UTMB). Danny lives in SF, he made some money on real estate during the dotcom bubble and now teaches cycling classes, had run 35-plus ultras, and likes to date women in their mid-20s. Angie is a tough woman with some gray in her hair whom I'd paced on one of the ascents after the stop at the Tennessee Valley aid station. We were swapping the lead for a while and then fell in to a pace side by side; she commented that I was a strong climber, and as a first time ultrarunner I took that as a compliment, but then I pointed out that I was just trying to keep up with her. She'd done some ultras before, and I lost her on the downhills to Stinson Beach (I was having too much fun burning out my quads racing down that mud), but I saw her again at the finish and got a big hug, telling her she was right about everything and how glad I was to have finished my first ultra.

My goal was just to finish the thing, but to finish with a smile on my face. I was walking funny for days afterwards, my time was pathetic, but I was grinning the whole way. As with any of these long races there was a point at which I thought to myself, "never again," this time it was around mile 22 or 24, but meh - promises like that are made to be broken, and I'm already starting to sniff around for my next 50K. Besides, I burned 3,395 calories - do you even realize how many slices of pizza I can eat in compensation now?!

The North Face Endurance Challenge California 50K
Nike Terra Kiger
32.29 miles
8hrs:5min:36secs
5,781 ft elevation gain
3,395 calories